Carla Saulter has been living without a car—and using public transit as her primary form of transportation—since March of 2003. Though she gave up driving because of concerns about the detrimental effects of car culture (pollution, traffic, sprawl), the decision has profoundly and positively changed her life. Some of these positive changes include: enforced exercise, time to read, reduced expenses, and contact with her community on a level that would never have been possible in the isolated bubble of a single-occupancy vehicle.

A bus chick by any other name…

A couple of months ago (yes, I have a serious backblog), a reader e-mailed to point out the irony of my first name (which, for those who don’t know, is Carla). As surprising as it might sound, I haven’t thought about my name’s association with automobiles since elementary school. Back then, the class clown (incidentally, the only other kid in my grade who rode the 2 to school) got a kick out of making fun of it. “Truckla! Trainla!” he’d tease on our morning ride. Later, on the way home, he’d pick up where he left off: “Boatla! Planela!” And so on, ad nauseam, until we parted ways downtown.

Not surprisingly, Busla (not to be confused with bus luh) was the name that stuck. It was also the name he was screaming at the top of his lungs when he “accidentally” (on purpose) threw my backpack (an early form of the bus chick bag) into the pond at the Denny-Blaine stop. But that’s a story for another post.

“Busla” back in the day. That’s me in the back on the left–yes, the one with the oh-so-fresh shag–or, as my brother Jeremy (front right) calls it, the “whip cut.”